The Seduction Scheme. Kim Lawrence

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СКАЧАТЬ take my offer or leave it.’ He made it sound as though he didn’t give a damn.

      ‘I think you’re mad, but I do have a blister.’ She looked down at her feet. ‘New trainers,’ she added, scuffing her toe on the ground.

      ‘Follow that cab!’

      The driver was quite happy to oblige once Benedict had paid up front. He’d be prepared to pay a lot more just to have the opportunity of telling that scrap’s parents what he thought of them! Something about those eyes had made his protective instincts kick in with a vengeance.

      The building the black cab drew up in front of was not in the sort of neighbourhood he’d expected. Rows of Edwardian villas lined the roads, and there was an air of quiet affluence. He watched as the kid walked up the driveway of a house as he got out of the cab.

      She didn’t see him until she had the key in the lock of the ground-floor flat. ‘What are you doing here?’

      ‘I’d like a word with your father.’ Actually he’d quite like to throttle the irresponsible idiot.

      ‘I don’t have a father.’ Her whole stance said, Want to make something of it?

      ‘Well, your mother, then.’

      ‘She’s out. She won’t be back until very late.’ The door opened a crack and, slippery as an eel, she disappeared inside, closing the door behind her. ‘Her boyfriend’s going to propose to her tonight!’ The last words were muffled as the door swung closed.

      Images of a heartless, selfish woman so involved in her own pleasure that she neglected her child made his chest swell with righteous indignation. He’d heard definite tears in that tough little voice as the door had closed. Without actually thinking past his need to tell this woman exactly what he thought of her, he leant hard against the doorbell.

      The baby-sitter had begun to scream again at the mention of the police.

      ‘Police? Is that really necessary, Rachel?’

      Rachel French rounded on her escort, her grey eyes smouldering with anger. ‘Necessary! It’s eleven-thirty at night, Nigel, and my ten-year-old daughter is not only not in bed, she is not in the flat, or the building. She could be anywhere!’

      Actually, considering the discussion they’d had earlier in the day, Rachel had a pretty shrewd suspicion where her errant child was heading. This knowledge only increased the wholesale panic that threatened to reduce her to a gibbering wreck. Fear lodged like a physical presence in her chest; she could smell it and taste it. She glanced at the baby-sitter who had collapsed onto the sofa. She couldn’t lose it now; one incoherent wreck was enough! Her fingernails gouged small half moons in the soft skin of her palms, but her expression stayed composed.

      ‘It w-wasn’t my fault!’

      ‘I didn’t say it was. Charlie is very…resourceful. Did you say something, Nigel?’ she enquired icily as a disparaging sound emerged from his throat.

      ‘Resourceful is one word for her; I could think of others…’ He’d been goaded by the frustrating events of an evening which he had planned so meticulously into forgetting his usual tactful reticence.

      ‘At another time I’d be only too delighted to hear your opinion…’

      ‘Rachel, darling, I’m—’

      ‘In the way,’ she supplied, her urgency making her brutal as she shrugged off the unwanted protection of the arm he had draped across her shoulders. ‘Susan, what time was it when you last actually saw Charlie? Not just heard the music in her bedroom, actually saw her. I know you’re upset, but it’s very important.’ She stifled her natural impulse to wring the information out of the girl and forced herself to sound calm and reasonable. It took every ounce of her will-power. ‘We need to know how long ago she left.’

      ‘I…I’m not sure,’ the girl sniffed. ‘I was revising…the finals are next week.’

      Rachel bit back the scathing retort that hovered on the tip of her tongue. To say her interest in this young woman’s academic future was tepid would have been an exaggeration.

      ‘You were being paid to look after the child, not study.’ Nigel’s accurate but ill-timed observation reduced the young woman to incoherent sobs once more.

      ‘Nigel,’ Rachel snapped, ‘will you be quiet?’ The loud and continuous sound of the doorbell interrupted her. ‘Charlie!’ she breathed, hope surging through her body.

      ‘Will you stop that and go away?’ The door opened a crack. ‘I didn’t want Susan to know I’ve been—’

      ‘Charlie!’

      ‘Mum!’ The child released her hold on the door and Benedict took the opportunity to push it open. The source of the first cry stood at the other end of the hallway. A slim-fitting lavender-coloured floor-length gown was gathered in one hand, a mobile phone in the other. She let go of both; one slithered around her shapely calves and the other hit the big, distinguished-looking man with the silver-grey hair directly on the nose.

      ‘I’ll kill you, you little wretch,’ the low, intriguingly husky voice that evoked a response like fingers gently moving up his spine announced lovingly.

      Benedict didn’t think this was likely, unless you could hug a person to death. The woman had dropped onto her knees and the child had walked straight into her arms.

      ‘Are you all right? How could you?’ Rachel was torn by equally strong desires to berate and kiss her daughter. ‘Hush, it’s all right now,’ she murmured as the slender frame was shaken by silent sobs.

      Rachel noticed the man standing behind her daughter for the first time. How sad—the lights were on but there was definitely nobody home! It instantly struck her as tragic that someone so sinfully beautiful was lacking the intelligence to lighten those heavy-lidded, almost black eyes. She pressed her daughter’s damp face into her bosom and looked briefly into the blank face. Jaw slack, eyes glazed and vacant, he stared back dully. Latin extract, she decided; there was nothing Anglo Saxon about his olive-toned skin and glossy black hair.

      ‘Who’s this, Charlie?’

      ‘That’s…Steven. He fetched me home. I thought I’d get back before you were home, Mum. How did you know…?’

      ‘Susan rang us, of course.’

      ‘Susan doesn’t usually look in after John arrives. Just my luck!’

      ‘John?’ Rachel turned her attention to the baby-sitter who hovered nervously in the background.

      ‘My boyfriend. He sometimes comes to keep me company. He had to go home early tonight.’ Her tear-stained young face turned an unattractive shade of red as she studiously avoided Rachel’s eyes.

      ‘How fortunate for us he had a prior engagement.’ Rachel pushed the wing of soft brown hair that had escaped her smooth chignon from her face and the sparkle of anger faded from her eyes. She could afford to be magnanimous now she had her daughter back. Her fingers slid down Charlie’s silky, jaw-length blonde hair and she felt weak with relief. Things could have been so different.

      Her eyes returned to the magnificent СКАЧАТЬ